A con artist walks into a grief support group. Chaos ensues.

After the death of her wife, Shelby is suffering from prolonged grief. She's increasingly isolated, irritated by her family's stoicism and her friends' reliance on the toxic positivity of self-help culture. Then, in a grief support group, she meets Cammie, who gives Shelby permission to express her most hopeless, hideous feelings. Cammie is charismatic and unlike anyone Shelby has ever met. She's also recovering from cancer and going through several other calamities. Shelby puts all her energy into helping Cammie thrive-until her intuition tells her that something isn't right.

Gibson is fresh from divorce, almost forty, and deeply depressed. Then he falls in love with Cammie. Not only is he having the best sex of his life with a woman so attractive he's stunned she even glanced his way, he feels truly known for the first time in his life. But Gibson's friends are wary of Cammie, and eventually he, too, has to admit that all the drama in Cammie's life can feel a bit over the top.

When Gibson and Shelby meet, they realize Cammie's stories don't always add up. In fact, they're far from the truth. But what kind of a person would lie about having cancer? And what does it say about Shelby and Gibson that they fell for it? From the author of The Best Kind of People and The Spectacular comes a sharp, emotional novel about lies, liars and the people who love them.

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ZOE WHITTALL's fourth novel, The Spectacular, was published in 2021. The New York Times called it "a competent and highly readable testament to the strength of the maternal bond" and the Toronto Star called it "a singularly impressive piece of fiction." Her third novel, The Best Kind of People, published in 2017, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, named Indigo's #1 Book of 2016 and a best book of the year by the Walrus, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life and the National Post. Her second novel, Holding Still for as Long as Possible, won a Lambda Literary Award for trans fiction and was a Stonewall Honor Book. Her debut novel, Bottle Rocket Hearts, won the Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Award for Best Emerging LGBTQA+ novel. She has worked as a TV writer on the Emmy Awarded “winning comedy show Schitt's Creek and Degrassi, and she won a Canadian Screen Award for comedy writing on the Baroness Von Sketch Show. Zoe Whittall has published three volumes of poetry, most recently an anniversary edition of The Emily Valentine Poems. Born on a sheep farm in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, she lived in Toronto for many years before moving to Picton, Ontario.